It was a pro-business presentation to a decidedly pro-business gathering. Nonetheless, the tune that the developers of a huge retail/residential project in Slidell were playing Wednesday was music to the ears of those on hand at the East St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

The first phase of the Fremaux Town Center project will formally open in March, and when the project taking shape on a giant tract of land along Interstate 10 is complete, it will bring up to 1,500 permanent jobs and up to $230 million in annual sales, developers with Stirling Properties, based in Covington, said.

Stirling is developing the 310-acre site with Chattanooga, Tenn.- based CBL & Associates Properties Inc. The first two phases will emphasize retail; later phases promise office space, hotels and luxury multi-family residential, Underhill said.

Phase I includes Dick's Sporting Goods, Best Buy and Kohl's, as well as Cheddars and Panera Bread restaurants, the developers have said. A 126,000-square-foot Dillards store will also be on the site.

Construction is ahead of schedule, Underhill said. The grand opening for Phase I is set for March 14, 2014, although Dick's and Kohl's will have "soft openings'' prior to that date, he said.

Site work for Phase II, which will include additional stores and restaurants that Underhill said he could not yet publicly identify, will begin in February, with a targeted opening of March 2015.

"We're well ahead of schedule,'' he said, adding that developers are having little difficulty marketing the project to stores because of the "pent-up demand'' in Slidell.

"Slidell is just starting to hit the upswing,'' Underhill added.

The development was unveiled with great fanfare in 2008 by Alabama-based Bayer Properties as a $900 million retail-office-residential complex. But the massive project never seemed to get off the ground, even though the city, parish and state spent a lot of money to help prepare the site. Developers blamed the downturn in the national economy at the time.

The city of Slidell even approved a 1-cent sales tax for the area encompassing the site to offset Bayer's costs for the project, which at the time was called Summit Fremaux.

The site largely languished until Stirling and CBL took over the project and renamed it Fremaux Town Center. Construction work began at the site in March.

Slidell Mayor Freddy Drennan has been effusive in his praise of the new developers and the project and said it will spin off additional development.

"It did. It has. And it is continuing,'' Drennan said.

Marty Mayer, Stirling's president and chief executive officer, said business is booming along the I-10 and I-12 corridors from Texas to Florida and that Stirling recently opened an office in Mobile, Ala. Mayer noted some economists' assertions that this region - sometimes called the "Third Coast'' - has emerged from the recession stronger than many others and said St. Tammany and Slidell appear well-positioned for an upswing in economic growth.